The Long Tail Approach

Some of you might have heard the term "long tail" used around the blogosphere and wondered what the length of an animals tail had to do with the internet. Well okay maybe you didn’t wonder that but you might have. Sorry that was a poor attempt at humor.

But seriously, do you know what “long tail” means?

To put it as simply as possible it is a method or way to maximize a search which in turn maximizes a products popularity and worth. The theory goes that if your search has more terms then it will bring up more results and it will also bring up more specific results. And in turn if your blog or post has multiple keywords than it is more likely to come up higher on searches.

The system was really perfected by online retailers such as Amazon who used it to get people more aware of items available. There are so many types of books by so many authors that many people don’t even know stuff is out there. So by using the long tail approach Amazon was able to get some of their low selling inventory sold.

Since then it has become an important tool of online merchants (such as netSpray users) who want to get their products sold. Bloggers also use the approach to get a higher ranking and listing on search engines which in turn brings more traffic to their sites.

So you see the length of an animals tail really doesn't matter at all. It is just a tool (or strategy) to make your post or site more popular on the search engines such as Google.